John Lee Hooker (c. August 22, 1912[1] – June 21, 2001) was an American blues singer, songwriter, and guitarist. The son of a sharecropper, he rose to prominence performing an electric guitar-style adaptation of Delta blues. Hooker often incorporated other elements, including talking blues and early North Mississippi Hill country blues. He developed his own driving-rhythm boogie style, distinct from the 1930s–1940s piano-derived boogie-woogie.

The Hooker children were home-schooled. Since they were only permitted to listen to religious songs, the spirituals sung in church were their earliest exposure to music. In 1921, his parents separated. The next year, his mother married William Moore, a blues singer who provided Hooker with his first introduction to the guitar (and whom John would later credit for his distinctive playing style).[9] Moore was his first significant blues influence. He was a local blues guitarist, who learned in Shreveport, Louisiana, to play a droning, one-chord blues that was strikingly different from the Delta blues of the time.[6] Another formative influence was Tony Hollins, who dated Hooker's sister Alice, helped teach Hooker to play, and gave him his first guitar. For the rest of his life, Hooker regarded Hollins as a formative influence on his style of playing and his career as a musician. Among the songs that Hollins reputedly taught Hooker were versions of "Crawlin' King Snake" and "Catfish Blues".[10]

He worked in factories in various cities during World War II, eventually landing a job in 1943 at the Ford Motor Company in Detroit. He frequented the blues clubs and bars on Hastings Street, the heart of the black entertainment district on Detroit's east side. In a city noted for its pianists, guitar players were scarce. Hooker's popularity grew quickly performing in Detroit clubs and, seeking a louder instrument than his acoustic guitar, he bought his first electric guitar.[12]

Hooker's recording career began in 1948, when Los Angeles-based Modern Records released a demo he had recorded for Bernie Besman in Detroit. The single, "Boogie Chillen'", became a hit and the biggest selling race record of 1949.[6] Despite being illiterate, Hooker was a prolific lyricist. In addition to adapting traditional blues lyrics, he also wrote originals. In the 1950s, many black musicians saw little money from their record sales. So Hooker often recorded variations on his songs for new studios for an upfront fee. To get around his recording contract, he used various pseudonyms, such as John Lee Booker, for Chess Records and Chance Records in 1951–1952; Johnny Lee for De Luxe Records in 1953–54; John Lee, John Lee Cooker,[13] Texas Slim, Delta John, Birmingham Sam and his Magic Guitar, Johnny Williams, and the Boogie Man.[14]

His early solo songs were recorded by Bernie Besman. John Lee Hooker rarely played with a standard beat, instead, he changed tempo to fit the needs of the song. This often made it difficult to use backing musicians, who were not accustomed to Hooker's musical vagaries. As a result, Besman recorded Hooker, in addition to playing guitar and singing, stomping along with the music on a wooden pallet.[15] For much of this time period he recorded and toured with Eddie Kirkland. Later sessions for Vee-Jay Records in Chicago used studio musicians on most of his recordings, including Eddie Taylor, who could handle his musical idiosyncrasies. "Boom Boom" and "Dimples", two popular Hooker numbers, were originally released on Vee-Jay.[16]

His last in-the-studio recording on guitar and vocal was of a song he wrote with Pete Sears called "Elizebeth", featuring members of his Coast to Coast Blues Band with Sears on piano. It was recorded on January 14, 1998 at Bayview Studios in Richmond, California. The last song Hooker recorded before his death was "Ali D'Oro", a collaboration with the Italian soul singer Zucchero, in which Hooker sang the chorus "I lay down with an angel." He is survived by eight children, nineteen grandchildren, eighteen great-grandchildren, a nephew and fiance Sidora Dazi. He has two children that followed in his footsteps, Zakiya Hooker and John Lee Hooker, Jr.[citation needed]

^In the 1920 federal census, series T625/Roll 895/page 235, in the city of Tutwiler, Tallahatchie County, Mississippi, Supervisor's District 2, Enumeration District 87, Sheet #29 A, line 25, enumerated February 3, 1920, John Hooker is one of nine children living with William and Minnie Hooker. John is listed as 7 years of age at his last birthday. If accurate – and if his birthday is August 22 as he claimed – John Lee Hooker was born August 22, 1912.

^1912, 1915, 1917, 1920, and 1923 have all been cited (Boogie Man, p. 22). 1917 is the one most commonly cited, though Hooker himself claimed, at times, 1920, which would have made him "the same age as the recorded blues" (p. 59).

^According to Boogie Man, p. 24, "In 1928, Will Hooker Sr. and Jr. made a profit of twenty-eight dollars" from farming, making his death in 1923 impossible

^The 1920 federal census, series T625/Roll 895/page 235, in the city of Tutwiler, Tallahatchie County, Mississippi, Supervisor's District 2, Enumeration District 87, Sheet #29 A, lines 18-19, enumerated February 3, 1920, William and Minnie were 48 and 39 years of age, respectively. Given this information, Minnie's year of birth is ca. 1880, not 1875. Minnie was thought a "decade or so younger" than husband William (Boogie Man, p. 23), again giving further credibility to this census record as corroborative evidence concerning John Lee Hooker's origins.